


Shadows and Dust

by iwtv



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 21:02:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4760927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwtv/pseuds/iwtv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post season 2. Still on the man o'war, Flint fights the pain of Charlestown with drink and opium and has a conversation with Thomas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows and Dust

 

“You must hate me now,” he said to the ghost.  
“I could never hate you. I love you,” said the ghost.  
James sat on the white window seat in front of the Spanish man o’war’s window, decanter of rum in hand. On the other side of the seat rested a smoking pipe with half-burnt ashes of opium inside. He’d borrowed it from Captain Vane.  
James raised the bottle to his lips, squeezing his eyes shut and then opening them again but the blonde-haired phantom did not go away. It seemed to be waiting for James to speak again.  
“All I’ve done,” James began, hanging his head. “Miranda is dead. She’s dead and it’s my fault.”  
His raised his eyes to look at the ghost, expecting to see disdain or anger or even hate on its face but there was none. The apparition simply looked at him, eyes bright and skin still as clean-shaven and youthful as the real man had been.  
“Do you also think my death was your fault?” It asked him now.  
James hesitated. The ghost’s lack of expression was maddening. James wanted to know the emotions that drove its questions, but perhaps, he thought, it had no emotions, being a ghost.  
James swallowed hard. “I try not to,” he said in a raw voice. “But sometimes I can’t help it.”  
His grip around the neck of the rum decanter tightened as the ever familiar swell of rage filled his chest. The window and the rest of his captain’s cabin began to blur; his eyes felt wet and bleary with liquor and opium yet the ghost remained strangely in focus.  
“This is what is killing you,” it said, face still a perfect mask. “This anger, this bitterness. You must let it go—“  
James abruptly rose off the seat, a bit too fast and had to steady himself. He forced his eyes to meet the ghost’s.  
“How can I?” he asked. “First you and now her—everything I’ve fought and bled for is fucking destroyed!”  
“You must move beyond it,” said the ghost. James thought he saw a flicker of something spark in its blue eyes.  
“You must,” continued the ghost, “Or this anger will consume you and all you have fought for will be in vain.”  
“It already is,” James replied miserably.  
“No,” said the ghost. “Not if you can move beyond this and find someone else.”  
James looked up at it, brows furrowed.  
“What?”  
“Find someone else,” it repeated. It moved towards him. The motion unsettled James. He couldn’t tell if it walked or floated or practiced a combination of both. He hardly had time to decide. The ghost’s own brows came together as it reached out to James. The gold ring on its little finger was the same as it had been in life, and suddenly the exact details of this thing hovering in front of him was almost too much for James. The scent of shaving cream and silk and all that had been Thomas Hamilton hit him fully and all at once. James backed up into the window seat, breath catching in his throat.  
“Jesus,” he mumbled. He felt hot tears in his eyes. The ghost was no less than a foot in front of him. Its death-like countenance had dissolved into something much brighter, filled with all the light and love and determination James remembered the living man had possessed.  
“Find someone, James,” it implored him. “Find another soul to love, to hold and kiss and share your love of books with. Find someone who understands you as Miranda and I once did. Do this, or I fear what will become of you.”  
James could scarcely breathe, let alone respond to its warning. He remained crammed up in the corner of the window seat, rum long since forgotten and resting slack against his leg. The spirit continued staring at him until James couldn’t bare it any longer.  
“Please leave me be,” he begged it.  
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it?”* It asked him.

James snapped awake, his hand jerking out to catch the falling rum bottle as his let hit it. He caught it, looking around the room warily. He was still on the window seat, opium pipe in the same spot as before. There was no ghost before him; his cabin was his own again. The smell of shaving cream and silk had also vanished. James slowly moved to his desk, still feeling slightly drunk. It was still night outside the ship’s windows.  
He lit the lantern on his desk. Something other than the usual dust stirred in the air and landed back on the desk again. James bent over and shined the lantern directly over it. Just a hair. But as the light caught it James discerned it was not his hair. He pressed a finger over it, lifting it between his index and thumb. The hair was blonde.  
James blew it away, sweeping a palm over the corner of his desk. His hand was shaking. He sat at his desk for a long time; unable to decide for certain what he thought had just happened. Finally he pulled open the desk drawer and pulled out the copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. His fingers delicately traced over the insignia on its cover until they stopped shaking.

***  
End


End file.
